


Forty One

by sheafrotherdon



Category: Torchwood
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-09
Updated: 2007-12-09
Packaged: 2017-10-11 23:29:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/118349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon/pseuds/sheafrotherdon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They never use names when they're together – too confusing, the back and forth of Jack and Jack – and when the first possessor of the name's curled fondly around the man who's worn that mantle longest, it's stunningly irrelevant, nothing more than breath of sound blown into the maelstrom of memory and time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forty One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [spacedye_vest](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=spacedye_vest).



They never use names when they're together – too confusing, the back and forth of Jack and Jack – and when the first possessor of the name's curled fondly around the man who's worn that mantle longest, it's stunningly irrelevant, nothing more than breath of sound blown into the maelstrom of memory and time.

It shouldn't be possible for Jack to come here, his U.S. Air Force blues still tailored beautifully, his face as open as it was in 1941. It shouldn't be possible for another Jack to pull him close, to bury his face above a shirt collar's starched edge, breathe in the scent of sweat and life and war. But they both know something about the universe now, about glitches and rifts, the unsteady march of years, the parallel possibilities, losses and gains that eddy and fade above a void.

The first time's a surprise, one Jack half-asleep in bed, curled absently around the ache he hasn't the sense to recognize as loneliness, the other stepping out of the shadows, letters in his hands. Where Jack has lain awake at night, composing missives in his head, trying to still the day-to-day whirl of his thoughts, time has been working a different magic, inking his secrets upon a page, sliding them into envelopes made delicate with risk. Penny stamps hang crooked at each envelope's edge. "Never took you for the sentimental sort," Forty One drawls.

"Never took you for the type to bend time," says the other, but he's already sitting up, standing, reaching for him, and that night they slide limb against limb, twine fingers, steal breath.

It's not routine, what they have, what they share – there's no rhyme or reason to Forty One's visits, no anger that keeps him away or act of will that can summon him when Jack thinks he's owed. But he comes when it fits, when the ache in Jack grows dark and listless, when his heart's blown open, when the stretch of years rasps like a knife against bone. He comes in Air Force blues, sheds his uniform, takes up the blush stirred by Jack's attentions and wears it like the suit of clothes in which he should've walked the earth.

"Insatiable," he whispers fondly into Jack's damp hair when they're spent and sticky amid the remnants of remembered first kisses.

Jack stretches, smirking, incorrigible if nothing else. "I like what this body can do," he shrugs.

"Not that," says Forty One, smiling, relaxed amid the affectionate ruins of every touch that anchors them here. "I mean your urge to be loved."


End file.
